On Thursday with a lot of the options industry out in Sin City for the annual options conference, trading on the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) had been delayed thanks to system problems, reported The Wall Street Journal. ?
This came at the start of the trading day. The exchange noted in a system alert that customers had expressed problems ?downloading? CBOE information early in the morning and then announced on its website, “Some users are experiencing issues downloading CBOE and CFE products this morning. The CBOE is looking into this issue and will advise.”
Trading could not take place and NASDAQ OMX responded by not sending its PHLX options business to the exchange while the outage occurred.?
While initially set to restart trading at 10:15 a.m. ET, then 10:20 a.m., CBOE further put off trading and did not have an estimate when it would resume. This information came via a traders’ notice.?
The outage impacted floor and electronic trading as well as the VIX and the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index being unavailable. Mark Sebastian, chief operating officer of Option Pit, said of its effect to The Wall Street Journal,?”Not being able to trade the VIX and SPX is a big deal. The CBOE’s two biggest products and the most used by institutions for hedging, they’re both untradable right now.”
A CBOE?spokeswoman had not commented on the problem but said the SEC is “monitoring the situation,” reported Reuters.